SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) vs. SymphonyAI IT Service Management

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds Service Desk
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Service Desk (formerly Samanage) is a cloud-based, multi-tenant IT service desk and asset management software for IT and enterprise service management. Samanage is on a single, always new instance of software. The service desk includes a self-service portal, service catalog, knowledge base, and SLA management tool. The integrated agent-based asset management solution collects contracts and licensing data from Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix systems.N/A
SymphonyAI IT Service Management
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Symphony SummitAI, formerly the Summus IT Management Suite, is an ITSM and system monitoring offering from the company of the same name in Palo Alto.N/A
Pricing
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SymphonyAI IT Service Management
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Service DeskSymphonyAI IT Service Management
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SymphonyAI IT Service Management
Features
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SymphonyAI IT Service Management
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
7.0
97 Ratings
16% below category average
SymphonyAI IT Service Management
8.8
20 Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.096 Ratings8.820 Ratings
Expert directory6.057 Ratings8.915 Ratings
Service restoration6.058 Ratings8.518 Ratings
Self-service tools7.086 Ratings8.117 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.967 Ratings7.915 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation6.077 Ratings9.517 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards7.087 Ratings9.920 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
7.3
82 Ratings
12% below category average
SymphonyAI IT Service Management
9.0
20 Ratings
9% above category average
Configuration mangement8.074 Ratings8.420 Ratings
Asset management dashboard6.980 Ratings8.920 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement7.064 Ratings9.815 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
7.0
80 Ratings
20% below category average
SymphonyAI IT Service Management
9.4
20 Ratings
10% above category average
Change requests repository7.064 Ratings8.420 Ratings
Change calendar7.044 Ratings9.916 Ratings
Service-level management7.072 Ratings9.918 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SymphonyAI IT Service Management
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.1 out of 10
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SymphonyAI IT Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(119 ratings)
8.9
(20 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.5
(8 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.7
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(92 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SymphonyAI IT Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
SolarWinds
If you are looking for a way to support a company and bill based on the outcome this software works really well. If it's a quick password change there was no charge, but if it's troubleshooting things you click the box to charge. It works really well for this. Also bringing all your assets into this and associating them to a client works well. I can't think of anything that this software would not be less appropriate for. It works well for what we use it for.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
It is best for handling daily incidents and change records in the organization. And also provide features like which incident will have higher priority, and which have less and on the basis of that developer do their daily activities to resolve them. It also helps in managing our compliance change logs, which help the compliance team.
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Pros
SolarWinds
  • Approval flows: You can have multiple layers of approval required for the tickets and service requests you design. This helps us show auditors that access to privileged systems and data was formerly reviewed and approved by the appropriate managers.
  • Easy to design forms: You don't need to spend hours reading the documentation to figure out how to create forms. It's simple enough that you can just jump right in and start creating them with minimal training.
  • Lots of options and features are available for you to include in your forms.
  • Integrates well with SAML-based SSO and has capabilities for MFA.
  • Easy and useful search function. Need to find that ticket from last year that you worked for a particular user or issue? Just search by keyword or username, and it'll quickly find the ticket.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
  • The Design Studio is an easy solution for L3 support professionals to improve existing workflows without technical support quickly.
  • The process and UI are more seamless, robust, and attractive than existing solutions.
  • The copilot AI addition has removed a lot of repetitive tasks and improved UX.
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Cons
SolarWinds
  • There is potential to greatly improve the capacity for cascading attributes. Currently, categories are limited to a top-level category and one subcategory. This leaves a fairly shallow decision tree.
  • Greater flexibility to modify the layout of incident request forms.
  • More integration options for cloud file-sharing platforms. Solarwinds Service Desk has tie-ins to Dropbox but not other vendors.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
  • Business Rule Designer - Since it has many automation we are unable to use it properly, because of BRD related jobs not getting executed
  • Creation of sub tenant under tenant
  • 5 why analysis method in the problem management can be designed more efficiently rather than its designed now
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Likelihood to Renew
SolarWinds
My renewal is soon coming up, it is fairly likely I will renew again for the 5th year. I may consider evaluating what else is out there, It was requested by my staff to not make a change. They feel that SSD fits our needs, is easy to use and should keep it.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
The overall satisfaction is great and it offers great features. By expanding to using AI feature of Symphony Summit, we look forward to automate even ticket tracking and ticket resolution. The support provided by the symphony SummitAI team is also robust compared to industry standards and the team also conducts regular reviews to find out any dissatisfaction from the clients.
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Usability
SolarWinds
Solarwinds Service Desk has a very "user friendly" interface. Everything looks nice and neat. And, learning how to use the system is very easy. It provides multiple services that are easy for most people to grasp, and allows for great organization of incidents and assets. Support for Solarwinds Service Desk has a good response and resolution time and are easy to work with.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
SolarWinds
Because the data is stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) there are very rarely any outages. There have been some times when the product has been slow to load, but because the interface is web based it could be anything between my computer and AWS that was causing the issue. But also, because the application is web based it can be access from anywhere which makes it very convenient
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
No answers on this topic
Performance
SolarWinds
When the system is working, the pages load very quickly. We run reports all the time in the system. The reporting can be extremely complex or very simple. Either way, we have not had any issues with the reports. We do not currently integrate Solarwinds Service Desk with any other software.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
SolarWinds
SolarWinds support department will respond to you quickly from the time of purchase to after-purchase instructions & supporting, and the company is great in customers support. In buying a software, our organization always has a priority for the seller and support and accountability is very important to us, and the manufacturer or seller must be responsible and supportive.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
No answers on this topic
Online Training
SolarWinds
When we first purchased Samanage (now Solarwinds) they provided us with an informational training session to show us all of the basics on how the service works and showed us everything we were interested in using. There are still some areas of Solarwinds that we do not yet utilize but I know if we choose to use them in the future we would be able to schedule another session with our representative to have them show us what we need to know.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
SolarWinds
The implementation process for our organization was fairly simple. We set up an email address to receive the emails from the system (for incident creation), and we allowed the system to spoof our IT email to respond to requests. Solarwinds helped us with the rest of the implementation, and it took less than a week to get the system fully operational.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
SolarWinds
We chose SolarWinds Service Desk for its user friendly platform compared to what we had. Its was easier for requestors to submit tickets, provide feedback, merge tickets, build a suitable approval process. Our organization had a hard time going back and forth with the end user on providing a status on their request or issue, where most users just didn't follow through or lost interest in their issue. We would have to send multiple emails to get any type of feedback and that's something we did not want to keep on doing.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
The main reason for choosing Symphony Summit is the customization. We wanted to have a separate tool for our business unit. Compared to ServiceNow, which requires a license to approve a request, Symphony does not require a license. In addition, it is much easier to customize and scale.
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Scalability
SolarWinds
We have over 500 computers and tablets across our organization and this has helped us greatly in keeping track of where computers are and who is currently using it. I can see this product being useful to groups both larger and smaller than us and I really appreciate this product.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
SolarWinds
  • We are more easily able to quantify user satisfaction with support.
  • We are able to develop SLAs that quantify and define the obligation of our support teams.
  • The actual cost of Solarwinds Service Desk per agent user is high in our estimation. The more you implement this platform across your organization, the more tightly tethered you are to this solution.
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SymphonyAI IT Service Management
  • When rolled out in its entirety, SymphonyAI is expected to directly reduce the CTC of technical user support by 40%.
  • SymphonyAI has dramatically improved user experience, helping NPS levels cross over 60%.
  • It has been instrumental in deploying workflows to production by more than 50%.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Service Desk Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

SymphonyAI IT Service Management Screenshots

Screenshot of an example of the AI-powered IT and enterprise service workflows available on the platform.Screenshot of the service portal, designed to make it easy for end users to get all their service issues addressed. By consolidating the user’s service needs into one place, users can find what they need quickly and easily.Screenshot of employee self-service, where employees can get answers and help. This helps to reduce call deflection and improve service experience.Screenshot of digitized work processes.Screenshot of the administration interface to launch new services. These can be rolled out with a few drag and drops using the Design Studio that includes 50 built-in modern controls to build forms, workflows, business rules and SLAs of any complexity.Screenshot of the 24/7 Omnichannel service desk experience. This delivers always on, natural language service experience to users with the AI-powered SymphonyAI Digital Agent. The agent features auto-resolve capabilities, multichannel support, and advanced natural language understanding.